Comment of the Week: Navy Corpsman

Navy Corpsman regularly posts on a number of blogs and he made a comment on my “Rambling” post. The comment was so profound I thought it needed to be posted since I feel EVERY man should read. Especially the younger guys.

“Could not leave this alone… you ask if just being older, nearing 40 has something to do with your lack of enthusiasm towards marriage. It does, but not in the sense that you’re not ready to settle down.

Getting older does a major number on your willingness to put up with any shit, from any given human being. 40 is just a number, but it’s a LARGER number than 20 or 30. You finally realize you’re nearing the midpoint of your life, and it hits you that you just don’t want to deal with drama, hamsters or borderline personality disorder, just so you might get laid on a semi-regular basis.

You’ve woken up to the fact that the amount of effort it takes, isn’t equaled by the rewards AND the extra risks to the rest of your life. This, THIS is outcome independence. Comprehending that you, and only you, will truly take care of you.

Danny, we’ve only known each other through the net, but I know you like I know my younger self. You’re a fixer, a traditional man who wants to be that good guy who fixes everything around the house, fixes cars, fixes supper, and so on. You like to be depended upon, you prefer to be doing SOMETHING rather than be waited on, hand and foot.

And now, nearing 40, you’ve realized that almost no woman you’ve ever met, has any appreciation for those virtues.

I knew an empowered woman, once. Then the batteries in her vibrator went dead.

Do what you want to do, be what you want to be, hurt nothing in the process, and live well.”

The Navy Corpsman

Damn. I can’t find ANYTHING else to say. He’s 100% right on target. Again, I LOVE women. Anyone reading this site knows this as an unabashed fact. As he correctly stated, more eloquently than i ever could, I simply realize what’s in my best interest. And I seriously doubt, SERIOUSLY, that I’ll stumble upon a woman that fit’s the bill for me, or that can GUARANTEE not to fuck me over if it ends (and statistically it WILL).

Only the hamster can rationalize “you’ll find the right woman some day” despite the odds men face. Maybe I’ll have gf’s, maybe I’ll have lover’s, but a life-partner……HIGHLY UNLIKELY. And trust me, SEVERAL women have tried to convince me otherwise. That the Disney Princess is out there just for me.

That’s the reason I went my own way. After a struck-by-lightening type event I am currently wondering if I have found someone for the longest term (by utter chance). If it fails (through whatever) I’ll be going back to MOW. The odds are so poor that the hunt is not worth the effort imho.

I wish what he said about finding a woman to appreciate your virtues was wrong, but I understand where you’re coming from. Even if you WERE looking for that awesome one in a million life partner, all the better to have an outcome independent attitude about it, otherwise you end up looking like a needy fool and turning her off anyway.

I wish what he said about finding a woman to appreciate your virtues was wrong, but I understand where you’re coming from. Even if you WERE looking for that awesome one in a million life partner, all the better to have an outcome independent attitude about it, otherwise you end up looking like a needy fool and turning her off anyway.

Even though I’m a little younger than yourself and the Corpsman, I have to say that in this comment, and the post it came from, you have encapsulated my attitude towards women perfectly. They can be great, but I can’t imagine a scenario where a LTR with one would be “worth it” for me. Over the last year I have come to the realization that I’m likely going to be “alone” (single) for the rest of my life, and instead of feeling scared, depressed, lonely, I feel…. liberated.

I made the same realization a few years ago. Though I phrased it a bit differently. I saw it as not needing to take any unnecessary crap. Just no more crap if I could avoid it. But that’s an external point of view.

There’s another way to look at this, you can avoid the crap that comes at you internally. You don’t have to allow other people to make you feel negative emotions for their use or amusement. By allowing another person to affect you emotionally turns you into nothing but a puppet for their amusement. I’m not going to play that game anymore. Either shut down the annoying behavior or avoid the person entirely, either way works.

I didn’t say it but I was thinking that the primary way for dealing with emotional crap is to just not let things get to you. Part of it is having a real understanding that people and circumstance are outside of you and have no real bearing on how you feel. At least they shouldn’t have any bearing on how you feel.

The emotions only happen inside of you, there is no tangible connection to objective reality other than what you allow. And that’s the rub, what we allow.

We don’t have to allow any kind of connection. Wanna feel happy? Then feel happy. You don’t have to get anyone’s permission. They can’t stop you from feeling happy or content.

I see this kind of control of your internal life, your overall emotional state, as an intrinsic part of being an adult. Do we allow children or animals to control us? Of course not, we control them, we set the frame.

Then why let anyone else on earth do the same?

There are tools for making this kind of control easier and surprisingly one of them is a more developed sense of empathy. Understanding what motivates other people will explain and many times excuse otherwise aggravating behavior. Pity is a better emotion to feel than annoyance and it in turn can motivate you to do something to help the other person adopt your happier frame.

If this sounds familiar to other INTJ / INTP personalities, it should, it’s a system builder point of view. In this case it is learning what makes other people tick in a fairly systematic manner.

I also agree that women should be taking note. I’ve tried explaining this attitude to people outside the Manosphere. Some of the men are reasonably receptive. I’ll bet you can guess what the women’s attitudes were though. Anger at me for pointing it out and disbelief that it’s happening. The majority of them are going to hang on to their denial all the way down. Oh well.

Yes, I understand where you’re coming from. I spend some time on it mostly to help out the guys who are receptive to the idea but haven’t fully “gotten it” yet. Sometimes all it takes is one little push for them to get the message, for them to have the epiphany “Why have I been trying to live my life based on someone else’s rules”. A lot of the other people will never get it no matter what I say, but that’s fine.

I think I’m getting ready to stop doing it though, too little reward for the effort… and too many other interesting things to focus on.

So I came back to this today, and I read this from the post by Navy Corpsman:

“Getting older does a major number on your willingness to put up with any shit, from any given human being.”

That resonates with me.

I had just turned 42 when I found the sphere. I’m 44 now. in the past couple of years since, I have noticed a marked decrease in my tolerance for BS, my willingness to put up with others’ foibles and idiosyncracies, and my ability to put up with shit tests and general bad behavior from anyone, but especially other women.